If you’re looking for a new phone for $200 or less, check out the ones we’ve reviewed and several new ones we’re excited about. …read more Source:: CNet

The R programming language is experiencing a surge in popularity “in the slipstream of Python,” according to this month’s TIOBE index, leaping into the top ten. “For historical context, we wrote of R’s spot in TIOBE nearly two years ago, and it had just made the leap from #50 to #39,” writes programming columnist Mike…

Commentary: I used to love, love, love Samsung Pay. But now its killer feature no longer feels so vital. …read more Source:: CNet

Monty Python once did a sketch where people tried to summarize Proust in fifteen seconds. Although summarizing eight FPGA-based CPUs is almost as daunting, [jaeblog] does a nice job of giving a quick sketch of how the CPUs work with the Xilinx Vivado toolchain and the Digilent Arty board. The eight CPUs are: VexRiscv, LEON3,…

The iPhone XS may have launched in 2018, but here’s why it’s not time yet to upgrade to the newer iPhone 11. …read more Source:: CNet

New colors. Design changes. And all the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra’s cameras, battery and more. …read more Source:: CNet

“A newly-discovered comet is giving skywatchers quite the show during the month of July,” reports CBS News: Astronomers discovered the comet, known as Comet C2020 F3 NEOWISE, back in March. It was named for the NASA mission that spotted it, for the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer… But astronomers knew they found something unique…

Do you want to design something to match existing threads on a bottle, or a cap? It turns out there’s an easier way than reaching tiredly for the calipers and channeling one’s inner reverse-engineer. Bottle cap threads — whose industry term is the neck finish — aren’t arbitrary things; they are highly standardized, and [Noupoi]…

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: Conventional theory has it that Planet 9 — our outer solar system’s hypothetical 9th planet — is merely a heretofore undetected planet, likely captured by our solar system at some point over its 4.6 billion year history. But Harvard University astronomers now raise the possibility that orbital evidence for Planet…

Whether it was as an impulsive youth or an impatient adult, there’s probably few among us who haven’t broken a telescopic antenna or two over the years. It doesn’t take much to put a bend in the thin walled tubing, and after that, all bets are off. So [The Amateur Engineer] couldn’t really be too…